Will RAM prices go back down?
What the one completed memory price cycle in our own data did, and where prices sit against it now.
Every previous memory price spike has reversed, and the last one is in our own data: three DDR4 kits we have tracked since 2015 and 2016 peaked at 2.2 to 2.8 times their 2016 price in December 2017 and January 2018, fell back to where they started within about a year and a half, and about two and a half years later were selling for roughly half their pre-spike price. That is what happened last time. Whether this cycle follows the same path, and when, is not something the data can tell you. What it can show is where prices are now against that pattern, and which signals turn first.
What happened last time
MemRadar's oldest price histories belong to three G.Skill RipjawsV DDR4-3200 kits: one 32GB kit and two 16GB kits, tracked continuously since November 2015 and February 2016 with no gap longer than two months. They are a small sample, and they are all one product line from one vendor, so we present them as three histories rather than as a market index. But they are complete, and they cover the whole of the 2016 to 2018 memory crunch and its unwind.
Taking each kit's median price in the first half of 2016 as its starting point:
- The 32GB kit went from about $188 to a peak of $440 on January 8, 2018, 2.3 times its starting price. It fell back below $188 in May 2019, sixteen months after the peak, and bottomed at $106 in August 2020, a little over half its 2016 price.
- The first 16GB kit went from $83 to $229 on January 2, 2018, 2.8 times. Back below $83 in June 2019, seventeen and a half months after the peak. Low of $59 in August 2020.
- The second 16GB kit went from $110 to $237 on December 12, 2017, 2.2 times. Back below $110 in April 2019, sixteen months. Low of $60 in September 2020.
The shape is the same on all three: a run-up through 2017, a peak within a five-week window at the turn of 2018, a slow decline that took about sixteen months to give back the whole rise, and a trough roughly two and a half years after the peak that undercut the pre-spike price by a wide margin. Anyone who bought at the top paid more than double what the same kit cost thirty months later.
Where DDR4 sits now, against that
Measured the same way, against their own 2016 prices, the three kits today sit between 1.2 and 1.8 times where they started, median 1.3 times (measured September 23, 2026). That is well below the 2.2 to 2.8 times they reached at the 2018 peak.
That will read as a contradiction with the rest of this site, which says DDR4 has more than doubled in the past year. Both are true, and the difference is the baseline. The one-year figure measures against the 2025 trough, which was the cheapest DDR4 has ever been. At their lowest, in June 2024 and March 2025, the three kits sold for about a quarter of their 2016 price. The comparison above measures against 2016, before the last crunch began. In 2016 terms, DDR4 has recovered a large part of a decade-long decline; it has not yet reached the heights of the last spike.
The limit of this comparison is important: the segment actually spiking hardest is DDR5, which did not exist in 2018. DDR5 prices are more than four times what they were a year ago, and there is no earlier DDR5 cycle to compare that against. The 2017 to 2018 pattern is a DDR4 pattern, and the honest statement is that it is the only completed memory cycle in our data, not that it is a template for this one.
Why this cycle may not follow the last one
The 2018 unwind happened because new fab capacity arrived and demand cooled, which is the usual way a commodity spike ends. Our explainer on why RAM prices rose covers the causes of the current one; the short version is that manufacturers are directing capacity toward high-bandwidth memory for datacenters, and consumer DRAM is getting what is left. That mechanism does not have a precedent in the 2018 data. It could resolve faster than last time if datacenter demand slows, or slower if capacity keeps being allocated away from PC memory for years. We are not going to guess which.
What to watch
Rather than a forecast, here are the signals that turned first last time and that we publish daily:
- The Price Index's one-month change for DDR5 and DDR4. In 2018 the monthly figures went flat before they went negative. Two consecutive negative months would be the first sign of a turn.
- The share of tracked products at 1.5 times or more above their all-time low, published on the data page. It is 88% today. When a spike unwinds, that number falls before the medians do, because the products that rose most fall first.
- Contract DRAM prices reported by TrendForce and in Micron's quarterly results. Retail follows contract with a lag of a few months.
If you need RAM now
Nothing above tells you to wait. The buying guide gives a current verdict per segment from the same data, updated daily, and every product page shows where today's price sits against that product's own history. If the price you are looking at is close to its all-time high and you can wait, history says patience has been rewarded; if you need the machine this month, the last cycle also says the top lasted about five weeks and nobody called it in advance.
Reviewed September 25, 2026 against the data on that date. The figures in this piece are fixed to their measurement dates and will not be silently updated; the piece will be reviewed when the index shows a sustained turn. Page last regenerated: October 3, 2026.